Through the lens of two recent games by Tender Claws, “The Under Presents” and “Tendar,” Samantha will discuss how approaches to narrative design and the creation of expressive beings (generated and scripted) may be strengthened by engaging the practices, rituals and relationship building techniques inherent in the performing arts. The Under Presents is a long-form, narrative VR game for Oculus Quest where live remote actors inhabit NPCs and a multiplayer community uses body language to pass on knowledge and lore. Tendar is an AR game about a virtual pet fish that “eats” your biometric information and emotions. The longer players feed the fish, the more a story is revealed about the very real technology that powers the pet: neural-networks, machine learning and mobile vision.
---Samantha Gorman is a writer, artist, curator and educator. Her work combines text, cinema, games, virtual reality and scholarship about digital media. She is one of the authors and creators of PRY (2015), “Virtual, Virtual Reality” (2018), "Tendar," and "The Under Presents."
Cosponsored by the departments of Art & Technology Studies and Visual Communication & Design.
